


Crash and Burn

by Canaan



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ninth Doctor, immediately after a Time War he had never intended to live through. Dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crash and Burn

**Author's Note:**

> This is Nine immediately post-Time War. Possibly dub-con. Very dark, but it does get better by the end. Thanks to Yamx for the beta and the title. Disclaimer: I don't own them and I'm not making any money.

The Doctor opened his eyes, which was the first wrong thing. Committing genocide wasn't something done lightly or anything except thoroughly, and as one of the races he'd consigned to death was his own, it had seemed both inevitable and appropriate that he would die as part of the process.

Also, the console room really wasn't meant to be on fire. He'd predicted two possible outcomes for the TARDIS. Either he'd make it back inside the TARDIS and both of them would be completely obliterated right down to their constituent molecules, or he wouldn't, and she would make her slow way to the nearest body with appropriate gravitational pull, where she would wait quietly until she eventually died, leaving only a blue husk behind. Fires were terribly messy, always putting rubbish in the air you simply weren't meant to breathe, no matter how efficient your respiratory processes were. So fire . . . fire was definitely wrong.

And then there was the bloke in the tinfoil hat. "Leave me," the Doctor gasped, struggling as the bloody fool tried to pick him up and make off with him.

The cloister bell clanged in the background, an alarm far too little and late. "I will _not_. You'd die, and I can't have that."

"Meant to," the Doctor muttered.

The stranger punched him in the stomach, very effectively denying him the breath to complain. "You're coming with me. The TARDIS needs time to recover, and she'll do that better without you in here."

Swept into a fireman's carry against his will, the Doctor found his head spinning. He ought to be arguing or fighting, but the soft greys and purples of the world swirled around him as he was hauled bodily from his TARDIS, and it seemed like too much effort to lift his head or flail his limbs.

Or keep his eyes open.

***

The Doctor opened his eyes again. It was definitely still a mistake, but nothing was burning this time. On the other hand, he wasn't sure brown patterned carpet and threadbare curtains were an improvement. He felt . . . just bloody fine, which was ridiculous, given the state of the TARDIS. He sat up, the duvet spilling down to his hips and the room spinning dizzily around him.

"Whoa, now, don't try that. Leaking artron energy all over the place, it's a wonder you've got only one head and your skin on the outside."

The Doctor turned his head slowly, since he'd developed a passing fondness for sitting upright and felt like staying there a bit. The bloke in the tinfoil hat sat in a shabby chair to one side of the room, his feet up on the edge of the bed in their black boots. Above the boots, he had black jeans rolled too far up his legs. The Doctor wasn't sure he'd ever seen an uglier tweed jacket, and what was up with the bow tie, anyway?

His brain caught up with his ears. Artron energy? He raised his hands, and they weren't the hands he remembered. Big hands, with long fingers. He'd regenerated, that was why he didn't feel worse. Damn. He closed his eyes, rubbing the heels of his hands against them until it stung. "Who are you?" Different voice, sharp and gruff with a very different accent than any he'd had before. Northern? "Do I know you?" Yes, Northern.

"Yes. Well, no. Well . . . _I_ know _you_."

Oh, great--the Ghost of Companions Future had come to mock him with the fact that he'd never see a Time Lord ever again. He laid his hands in his lap, watching the colored sparks fade from his vision. "Remarkably stupid, you know, interfering with what feeds into your own past. Could cause a paradox--knock off bits of space-time and nobody around to fix it." The CIA's meddling had always been tiresome, but without it, who'd interfere when some damn fool decided to play silly buggers with the Blinovitch Limitation Effect?

Undeterred, the fellow said, "No paradox, well, not unless I were stupid enough to let you die. Which I'm not. Will you lie down already? You're making this regeneration harder than it has to be."

"What's your name? And what _is_ that thing on your head?"

The bloke perked up. "Troy. And this is a Genalt Prophylactic Exverter--practical headwear for a man expecting to weather a psychic storm. Besides, it's cool."

The room tilted alarmingly. "'s not cool," the Doctor said as he fell back against the bed.

Troy walked over to the bed, fussing over him and trying to prop pillows behind his back. "This would be much easier if you'd just lie flat."

The Doctor groaned. "Leave me alone. Be fine, me. It's not like I haven't regenerated before."

"Sorry, no, not an option." Troy glared down at him. "Left to yourself, you'd lie there until you starved, thought up some creative way to kill yourself, or your TARDIS came looking for you."

The Doctor blinked. "What? A TARDIS can't do that."

Troy walked away, apparently unconcerned. "You'll be surprised what a TARDIS can do."

He ought to argue with that, the Doctor knew, but it just seemed like so much effort. He leaned back against the pillows, observing the shabby duvet and the battered cooker in the corner of the room. The Matrix was gone now, gone forever, so this couldn't be an afterlife--but if it were, he wished it weren't so depressingly domestic. "Why?"

"Because you haven't seen half of it yet," Troy said, plugging an electric kettle in on the tiny worktop.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "No, why the tinfoil hat? What do you need a psychic exverter for?"

Troy paused in the act of picking up the kettle. "For you."

***

 _It's like losing a limb--no, like losing all your limbs. Phantom voices shriek at him in something murkier and far less wholesome than darkness. Pain feeds back into his brain and he can't stop it, can't salve it, can't even clutch at it because there's nothing there: they're gone, they're all gone._

He woke with a gasp, flailing in the dark for something to lay hands on, something to kill, anything--just so long as it stopped . . . He knocked into the lamp, sending it crashing to the floor. Real, physical pain stabbed through his chest and a breath of gold escaped him as he shouted with it, sparkling in the air and laying him out flat on the bed again.

The Doctor stared at the ceiling. He heard Troy crossing the room, picking up the lamp, and placing it back on the bedside table. He never blinked as the light came on. His eyes didn't see the tweed jacket or the stupid hat as Troy crossed the room to the sink, but he heard the tap come on. The irritating bloke returned to his bedside, offering a glass of water. When the Doctor didn't take it, he set it on the bedside table.

The Doctor never turned his head. "A couple of aspirin with that would solve a lot of problems," he said.

Troy looked down at him with those deep, old-looking eyes. The Doctor expected a slap on the hand, or at least an old-fashioned chewing out. It would be a relief--give him something to react to, someone to lash out at besides himself.

Troy just looked at him with a compassion that was almost regret.

It made him want to scream.

***

Day five, day thirteen, day seventy-three--the Doctor didn't know and couldn't be arsed to care. From waking to waking, he had less physical pain and fewer incidents with strayed artron energy from the regeneration he hadn't wanted in the first place. Troy was always there, prattling on about nothing or reading a book or watching him in earnest, bored-looking silence. The Doctor wondered what he'd done--would do, would have done--to inspire such dogged devotion. Whatever it was, he wished he'd thought better of it.

On the other hand, the nightmares got worse. His body wanted so much sleep, he'd have lain in bed and dozed until he died of dehydration . . . except for the dreams. As he grew stronger, so did they. He kept waking to throw himself out of bed and pace the too-small room or yell at Troy, who was so persistently _there_ that he couldn't leave the room or express the fear and grief and rage with violence. He hadn't so much as looked in the mirror since he regenerated, but he could feel the dark circles under his eyes.

He didn't eat unless Troy insisted.

Worse than waking was not-waking. Every time Troy had to wake him, the Doctor watched the horrors of his memory and imagination fade into the terror of Troy standing right there, just out of reach. No matter how he shouted, raged, or wept, the Doctor couldn't persuade him he was taking his life in his hands to break the dream. So far, Troy hadn't a bruise on him, but someday the Doctor wouldn't know him, would be fighting Daleks in his sleep or wrapping his hands around Rassilon's throat, and by the time his sight cleared and he saw whom he really held in his hands, it would be too late.

Unimpressed, Troy offered to throw water on him during the next nightmare instead. That way he could wake up shaking, angry, and _wet_.

"Why am I ever going to travel with you?" the Doctor complained. "You're a self-contradicting pedant with delusions of competence."

"And an excellent sense of style," Troy said, straightening his bowtie.

***

He made it outside one day, walking through the soft purple grass with his feet bare beneath the black jeans and maroon jumper Troy had found him to wear. He didn't know where Troy had got to. Apparently they were staying in a little guest cottage in back of a larger manor. The manor appeared to be untenanted, its windows shut and its garden overgrown.

The Doctor could care less about the manor. He walked around the grounds until he found the TARDIS, placed his hand on the door, and yelped in surprise as she shocked him. She wouldn't let him in, no matter how sweetly he talked to her or how hard he tried to turn his key.

When he gave up and went back to the guest cottage, he discovered Troy already installed inside with a pot of tea and a plate of jammy dodgers. The Doctor ignored both. "So I'm a prisoner, then?"

Troy's eyes widened. "No! At least--not _mine_."

***

The Doctor filled two weeks with long rambles through the purple grass, never finding another sign of habitation. He began to be bored--horribly bored, mind-numbingly bored. It wasn't that he was lonely, it was that _nothing was happening_. Over and over again. Every day. He could have used a nice crisis--an invasion or revolution or a sneaky alien autocrat puppet mastering the locals from behind the scenes--just for the distraction.

He would have enjoyed being alone, but he could have done without his own company.

***

 _They had a picnic in the red grass, beneath the silver trees. Susan brought the blanket and Romana the picnic basket. The Doctor lay on his back and watched leaves, round like coins, flutter in the breeze while Leela told a story about an ancient buffalo hunt on a distant planet._

 _They ate cucumber sandwiches and prawn and mayo sandwiches and drank lemonade, though some part of him remembered these things did not belong on this planet. What of it? Romana was a perfectly capable TARDIS pilot, and he'd certainly shown her enough of Earth. They finished up with chocolate digestives while Susan told him about the baby goats they were trying to raise on the farm._

 _It was the best day._

***

The Doctor woke with a smile on his face and opened his eyes on the bland interior of the guest cottage.

He didn't remember getting up, didn't remember crossing the room. He caught the barest glimpse of this new body--naked, lean, and war-hardened--in the _en suite's_ mirror before he put his fist through it.

Shattering. Shouting. Sharp angles and sharp pain in the palm of his hand. The glimpse of a blue eye in the shard he held. Blessed agony slicing down his arms. Hands wrapped around his forearm like a vise. Shouting, and shouting back.

When the world became more than fragments, he was curled up on the floor, shivering like a child who hadn't any control over his own biological processes yet. The blanket wrapped around him had red spots going rust-brown. Troy knelt in front of him, running the dermal regenerator along long gashes in the Doctor's hands and arms.

Troy held the Doctor close when he was done, chivvying him up and back onto the bed. He ought to cry, the Doctor thought, but his eyes were dry. Maybe he'd burnt up all the tears for this life while still regenerating. Troy stretched out beside him, arms going around him to stroke his back as the ridiculous young man mumbled words that were probably meant to be soothing. The Doctor let them flow over him like wind through the leaves of a silver tree.

***

The Doctor held his younger self while he slept, conflicted.

He should have felt relieved—he'd been bored out of his mind for the last few months, and playing the role of the companion didn't suit him. But he couldn't have done anything else: his younger self couldn't have borne the idea of another Gallifreyan in the wake of the Time War, and he'd never got along with himself. What's more, he remembered Troy--irritating Troy. He supposed his younger self would be just as irritating, with the manic recklessness and silent despair, if he were well enough to elicit anything but compassion.

And he would be. Now. Tomorrow.

The Doctor remembered this night, remembered the dream, remembered the sense of betrayal that his own mind should give him something beyond hate and despair. He remembered the horrible disconnected feeling of shock in the aftermath of the suicide attempt and arms he hadn't known were his own holding him in his body, granting him a sense of reality.

He remembered the hand on his cock, remembered the younger self's confusion and need as he woke. The rangy man went limp in the Doctor's arms, too set-adrift in his own sense of continuity--things not ending after all, everywhere his timesense looked--to be anything but grateful for the contact.

He remembered his own shock, afterwards--that someone would want to touch him this way again some day. That he would allow it. That with everything else he'd lost, his body just kept going on.

In the morning, the younger Doctor made tea. "Don't know what I'll do now," he confessed. "Suppose somebody has to pick up after the mess the War left behind, and no one else to do it. Might as well be me."

Safe behind the psychic exverter still seated firmly on his head, the Doctor remembered making that decision. He'd do a number of utterly rash things in pursuit of it, uncaring of his own life, before he met Rose. "Makes sense," he told his predecessor.

The man in the dark jeans and jumper set his teacup down and stood. The Doctor knew he'd find a leather jacket draped over his TARDIS's railing, just inside the door. "At least you'll be able to take that stupid hat off," he said.

The Doctor rather thought he'd keep it, actually. It made him look quite impressive, in a 1950s Earth sort of way, and he might as well enjoy it for as long as he could--River would turn up sooner or later and shoot it. "You're off, then?" he asked.

The younger Doctor opened his mouth. Closed it. Shrugged. Headed for the cottage door.

"Doctor," Troy said.

His younger self gave him one last look over his shoulder.

"Don't forget to tell her it travels in time."

The comment won him a quizzical look. His predecessor sighed, nodded, and left.


End file.
